DNA Tests Solve Last Russian Czar Mystery

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It has been the pet theme of many a potboiler and wild suppositions over these last nine decades. It was rumored that Stalin himself was obsessed with this question. Did Alexei survive the bloody purge of the Russian monarchy in 1918? Stalin went to his grave with the question supposedly unanswered, but decades later modern science has finally revealed it. Crown Prince Alexei did not survive that bloody day of mass executions in Yekaterinburg.

History takes us back to 1918. Czar Nicholas II abdicated in 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia and he and his family were detained. The czar, his wife and their son and four daughters were shot by a firing squad on July 17, 1918. Bolshevik executioners shot the family in the basement of a merchant's house in Yekaterinburg, 1,450 kilometers east of Moscow. Attempts were made to destroy the bodies, and then they were dumped into pits to remove all evidence.

Rumors persisted that some of the family had survived. Claims by women to be Alexei's sister Anastasia were particularly prominent, although there were also pretenders to Alexei's and Maria's identities. Alexei was one of the more compelling of the victims, exciting sympathy because of his hemophilia. His mother's terror of the disease and fear that he would not live to succeed to the throne were the key to her falling under the thrall of the hypnotic and sexually ravenous self-declared holy man Rasputin, who rumor says, could subside Alexei's spasms.

The remains of their parents Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra and three siblings were unearthed in 1991 and reburied in the imperial resting place in St. Petersburg. But the remains of Alexei and his sister Grand Duchess Maria were not among those exhumed. Speculation was rife that maybe both of them survived. Then last year a team found bone shards belonging to two young people close by the original burial site. Russian and U.S labs were entrusted with the tasks of DNA verification on the bone samples. The U.S labs findings now conclusively have proven that the remains belong to Alexei and Maria. Eduard Rossel, governor of the region where the discoveries were made said,

" We have now found the entire family."

Though it has not been officially confirmed but according to some reports it is believed that University of Massachusetts's Medical School was involved in the analysis.

The next step in what happens to the remains will likely be up to the Russian Orthodox Church and whether it accepts the test results. The church had canonized all seven of them in 2000. The reaction of the self appointed heirs to the imperial crown of Russia was also unclear. For long, the heirs of the royal family have sought governmental 'rehabilitation' for the actions committed by the Bolsheviks during the revolution. It is doubtful whether they would be pacified by the findings. A lawyer for royal descendants said,

" The tragedy of the czar's family will only end when the family is declared victims of political repression."

The Russian courts and the government have maintained its stand that that the killings were premeditated murder and not political reprisals.

Another age old mystery falls to the wonder of modern science.